An update to those new Shanghai high school history texts

Remember those New Shanghai high school history texts?

A Chinese reporter recently called the Shanghai Education Bureau to find out what was going on with regard to the newly revised high school history textbooks that supposedly minimize Mao and other Chinese historical figures and represent a somewhat radical departure from the kind of history taught in China in the past.

The reporter was surprised by the reply: No one related to the writing or editing of the new history textbooks would be allowed to accept interviews from the media (report in Chinese). Baffled, the reporter asked why, and was told by one of the editors, Shanghai Normal University professor Zhou Chunsheng, that this was because of a certain New York Times report.... According to Zhou, this report and the foreign media completely took his remarks and even the issue as a whole "out of context" (境外媒体断章取义的报道) . In fact, it seems that the circulation of Kahn's report around the internet and its translation into Chinese caused much of the controversy. Netizens and education experts have been weighing in on the new history textbooks, which are said to be "under testing" and are thus limited to Shanghai for the time being.